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Blu-ray looks to spice up discs with Profile 2.0

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

March 19, 2008, 11:45 AM

The newest players coming out this fall will put interactivity at the forefront, putting the format on par with what HD DVD users had been enjoying for a long time.

Sony will be shipping two players that will be compatible with Profile 2.0: the BDP-S350, to be available in the summer for $399, and the BDP-S550 in the fall for $499. While the former would require a firmware update when Profile 2.0 ships, the latter would come with it preinstalled.

Along with the above two players, Sony says it will also be able to add Profile 2.0 support to the PS3 through a firmware update for that console.

HD DVD had been enjoying many of the features such as games, ringtones, chat, and the like since the format's inception through iHD. However, Blu-ray has long lagged behind in this aspect.

BD-Live hopes to change that. In any case, consumers need a reason to upgrade from standard DVD, and without much more than a better picture, many may bulk at paying a premium for the new technology. Then again, some may just be looking to play the movie and that's it. But it seems as if Sony is betting anyone willing to plunk down $300 or $400 for a player is looking for a little more than just that.

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By reptile168

posted Mar 20, 2008 - 12:55 AM

wake me up when blue-ray players will cost 50$.

Score: 0

By Pixelsmack

edited Mar 19, 2008 - 4:34 PM

Sony has merely stated that Profile 2.0 can be added to the PS3. However there will be certain limitations. This is all subject to change based on Sony's future statements of course.

These below are not related to PROFILES in any real way, but have long been associated with this coming upgrade.

*DTS-MA can be added but still not confirmed.

*Bit-streaming of the advanced audio codecs over HDMI continues to be denied. It is simply not possible with the hardware on board.

Score: 0

By Hollywood__

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 3:46 PM

The idiot public is now forced to buy a still incomplete format where every movie made to date still doesnt have the cool featured BD is capable of.

(sigh) People are such dumb asses.

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 4:45 PM

Agreed.

Score: 0

By Adrian79

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 2:09 PM

what is this "UPconverting" about??

I'm a very non-tech person and I own a ps3, I love blu-ray discs.. I was able to buy them @ $13 a piece since my local blockbuster was closing down :-)

I watch standard dvds on my ps3 and it looks crappy, I cant watch anything less than bluray, but I keep reading about "upscaling" what is that? How do i use it on my ps3? I set the option to "full", but still reg dvd's suck compared to blu!!

am i missing something?

Score: 0

By Hocuspokus

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 3:32 PM

There are now 2 distinct things happening with SD DVD.
Upscaling and Upconversion.

They are not the same thing.

Upscaling we all know about and probably have on our existing DVD players.
Basically it stretches the res and tries to fill in the blanks using the surrounding colours & textures.

HD DVD can upscale to a very high standard & Blu-ray players can upscale too (tho reports are mixed, the PS3 is said to be good but the Pansonic, for instance, isn't).

Toshiba now have another technology.
Super Upconversion.

It's real & it works.
It does what Police film & video labs all over the world have been doing for decades.

They take several frames of video (both before & after the frame being shown), identify the different details not present in the shown frame and combine it all together to give a true high definition image.......and they can now do this in real-time with a movie.
Impressive stuff.

By all accounts it's all thanks to Toshiba now using the Cell processor.

There's a promo video of it here -
http://www.youtube.com/w...5uI&feature=related

With any luck this one will take off.
The fact that it works with everyone's existing SD DVD collections has got to be a big draw if they can get the prices right.

So, who needs Blu-ray?

It's also pretty funny to see the Blu-ray f*ckwit kiddies have been out in force trying to swamp google with their dumb, idiotic and half-understood BS about what Super Upconversion is.
They fail, as usual.

Score: 0

By Owilliams

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 3:25 PM

Upconversion is when a standard DVD image is converted to be compatible with HDTV televisions.
Special DVD players called "upconverters" can be purchased to do this. From what I understand the mileage may vary somewhat from device to device, depending on the conversion scheme used. Most BD and HD-DVD players also upconvert, although I have no idea how how well your PS3 accomplishes this.
I bought an upconverter for my father-in-law last summer and it seems to do a very good job hooked to a 42" HDTV, although not as good as the results I get using a multimedia PC connected to a 38" HDTV. I do notice that some PC media player software does better than others at this task, which would also lend evidence that upconverter stand-alone units will also vary in result.
I have watched movies in HD, both hardware players and cable HD... and, to be honest, my results using regular DVDs on my PC are so close that I have no interest in paying for Blu-ray hardware and media costs at this point.
For my tastes, they are charging far too much currently for the seemingly minor gains in image quality.

I cannot speak for others though.

--Orv

Score: 0

By pridewalker

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 3:10 PM

The short version is this: upscaling is when standard def. content is translated to a high def. resolution. The picture is not true high definition, but (as is the case with dvds) it is much nicer.

I'm not sure about the PS3's capabilities as an upscaling player, since I use my HD DVD player for this task (and frankly, it gives me great results). Do a search on various AV forums (avsforums, highdefdigest.com) to find out what the best settings are, for the PS3.

I agree, both HD DVD and Blu have a much better picture in comparison, but until the prices come down (and the Blu finally offers the same functionality as HD DVD did), your average consumer seems to be taking the stance that an upscaled picture is good enough, for their purposes.

Score: 0

By Danno

edited Mar 19, 2008 - 1:39 PM

Wow price is still TOO HIGH!

For that price i can add to my DVD collection and enjoy the upconverting. As for the profile still doesn't add enough pizzaz for me to even think about buying into this tech from Sony.
With this thinking i bet sometime in the future they will introduce profile 3 and the option for upgrading the 2.0 player will not be available. Sony can stuff it

Score: 0

By jcato77

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 12:57 PM

I agree, Sony had to win one with Blu-ray after lossing betamax and mini-disc now they want us to pay that much for something that doesn't add very much to the movie. My HD-DVD doing upconverting looks really good so I'll sit back and wait for the next new product. Say digital downloads from Apple.

Score: 0

By pitdingo2

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 3:32 PM

digital downloads are great, however the market for them is tiny compared to fiscal media for the foreseeable future. DVD is not going away anytime soon. and, as has been stated many times, most people notice little if any difference between upconverted DVD and HD.

If the internet providers have their way with tiered pricing, digital downloads are going to be limited to what you can get from Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner, etc...

Score: 0

By fewt

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 6:04 PM

I've become much more interested in Dish Networks HD pay per view.

I'll buy a year of that before I'll spend $400 on blu-ray (so I lose some pixels from it being 1080i, it's not like the naked eye can really see 1080p)

Score: 0

By forgie

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 12:54 PM

Still too expensive. Give us a $200 option.

Score: 0

By dvferret

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 4:51 PM

No kidding, still the same price as a P$3.

Score: 0

By kpkid

edited Mar 20, 2008 - 4:43 AM

Some of these post make me lol. For those of us that can afford nice tv's and bd players we get a picture that is full hd and amazing. If you cant afford it fine but dont complain online come on get your kmmm off the net and make some money to buy one or to choose not to. Hey mabey its not that important to you the fact is its better and some people like better as opposed to worse or ugly :) And the guy who said the human eye cant see the diffrence from interlaced and progressive scan you my friend are wrong. by the way alot of people who had vhs players said the same things about dvd's when will you ever learn technology changes all the time the prices come down and things get better period!

Score: 0

By Owilliams

edited Mar 20, 2008 - 6:18 PM

(In response to kpkid) Sorry, in my case, it's not whether I can afford a Blu-ray player or not.

--Orv

Score: 0

By fewt

edited Mar 20, 2008 - 9:47 AM

No, sorry; Google it. You can't really see the difference between 1080i and 1080p. If you can make something out, it may be a slight reduction of jagged edges.

I'm glad you can afford a nice TV, you are so much better than all of us with our small TVs.

Oh, wait.

Thanks.

BTW, let me help you with that search: http://www.google.com/se...&btnG=Google+Search

Score: 0

By kpkid

edited Mar 22, 2008 - 5:54 AM

You are wrong the biggest difference most of the people who know about tv's is 720p is better for watching sports and 1080i is better for still images or slow moving 1080p is the best from both. Come on thats easy common knowledge. By the way I also own a 57" 1080i tv as well.

Score: 0

By kpkid

posted Mar 22, 2008 - 5:52 AM

from your same search that says what I did only better :)
Actually, you can tell the difference if the 1080i source is:
a) Truly interlaced (each field is temporally unique)
b) Full of horizontal motion

So, you can see the difference in a sports broadcast with text scrolling left to right on the bottom. Each field is really only 540 lines. This field is scaled up to 1080 lines (if you have a 1080p panel, otherwise, its probably 768 lines). The problem that shows up with scaling each field up to full screen is that the flat tops of the letters seem to bob up and down due to the 1/2 line offset between the field pairs. So you will see horizontal lines sort of shake at the tops.

A more sophisticate deinterlacing algorythm will combine several fields to a single frame. This eliminates the shimmer on horizontal lines, but usually gets it a little wrong for text scrolling sideways. Side-scrolling text is extremely hard to deinterlace. The main issue is that motion vectors can get confused with side-scrolling text. So errors will show up with the edges of the text in this case.

1080p content skips all of this issue by having no fields, just full size frames. Some 1080i content is really 1080p content that sends half the lines at a time. In other words, the fields are not temporally unique. This sort of content is extremely easy to deinterlace to a 1/2 frame rate 1080p.

Score: 0

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